 The Clarinet BBoard
|
Author: Lelia Loban ★2017
Date: 2011-05-08 12:24
GBK, Thanks for that link! It's the best article I've seen about the new Library of Congress facility.
>>The bunkers are a repository containing nearly 100 miles
>>of shelves stacked with some 6 million items: reels of film;
>>kinescopes; videotape and screenplays; magnetic audiotape;
>>wax cylinders; shellac, metal and vinyl discs; wire recordings;
>>paper piano rolls; photographs; manuscripts; and other
>>materials. In short, a century's worth of the nation's musical
>>and cinematic legacy. >>
Sounds great, is great, but the wording of that passage perpetuates a common misconception: that the Library of Congress has "everything." Note one important caveat buried later in the text:
>>But in addition to copies of every published recording
>>registered for protection in recent decades with the
>>U.S. Copyright Office, the library has acquired personal
>>collections .... >>
Not sure when the LOC started collecting sound recordings, but the acquisition of films and TV programs didn't begin until the mid-1960s. (I'm a film critic and I do a great deal of my research in the LOC. This information comes from a senior librarian, now retired.) The Copyright Office is located inside the Library of Congress, but the CO culls its collection of deposits often to make room for more, and then the LOC has to decide whether or not to acquire the hard copies the CO discards. The LOC does not save everything. There isn't room for everything.
However, a great deal gets saved now that would've been destroyed under the rules that prevailed half a century ago. (That librarian remembered the infamous dump room. She told me that on several occasions, she and some fellow librarians, when told to take a big load of films down to the dump room, simply absconded with them and hid them in an obscure storage area -- and brought them forth in triumph many years later when the high muckety-mucks came to their senses! But she and her co-conspirators couldn't save anywhere near all the movies that deserved saving.) Today, the LOC acquires, acquisitively, but the understanding that audio and visual recordings are important documents came so late that a great deal of material simply disappeared. The LOC now plays catch-up -- hence the vital importance of the recent gifts of storage space, money and copies. Many arrive at the site in extremely fragile condition because they've been stored without temperature or humidity controls.
The other word of warning, for those of us who compose music or any other creative work: digital formats are fugitive. Print out some hard copies.
Lelia
http://www.scoreexchange.com/profiles/Lelia_Loban
To hear the audio, click on the "Scorch Plug-In" box above the score.
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
The Clarinet Pages
|
 |
.jpg){kind=small}
.jpg){kind=small}
.jpg){kind=small}
.jpg){kind=small}
.jpg){kind=small}
.jpg){kind=small}
